All the way back! | Furry! | Projects |

 

New head for my fursuit! Page 2
Now that I have had the opportunity to wear the fox fursuit a few times, I have started to come up with improvements for it.  After making new paws and feet, I decided to make a new head.  This page shows how I made it.  Also check the page that shows how I made a new head for a friend, it includes more details on this same process.  Check the page for the new feet and paws as well!

 
New head, Page 1 New paws New feet
 
 

Here I have started to glue white fur onto the lower jaw.  The excess is allowed to hang down and will later be sewn to the black fur to make the neck.

This looks a bit like a very shaggy dog!  This is a white piece that has been glued to the sides of the snout, but not the top.  It is long enough to extend along to the back of the jowl pads.

This view shows the fur trimmed away from the top of the snout.  You can see the glue on the near side where the fur has not been glued yet.  The top of the snout will be black.

I call this the "nun shot"... it just reminds me of a nun!  The whire fur has been attached and trimmer and now a large piece to cover the back of the head is in place and held with pins to the helmet.  The fit is straight across the top of the head, but to get a snug fit in the back, it needed to be slit down the back and sewn up.  On the sides, it is slipped under the white fur and the jowl pads and then later hand sewn.

A small piece of black fur has now been attached to the top of the snout.

I have now fitted a piece of black fur to the face and cut the eyes out.  After wearing this mask, I have decided that I am going to enlarge the eyes, both for better visibility and because they are out of proportion to the rest of the face.

I have brushed out the fur now to see just how everything is coming together... so far so good!

Here are the ears.  Each one is made of two layers of 1/8" thick flexible foam board with the edges built up with hot glue.  A piece of wire has been added between the two pieces and then the are glued together.  The fur is then glued to the backs and the edges trimmed and rolled around to the fronts.

The ears are put on by simply pushing the wire ends into the styrofoam helmet.  This is another planned change for the future, to make the ears easily removable for transporting the head.  I am thinking maybe embed headphone jacks into the head with plugs on the ears, and then you just plug them in.  I have also added two black wigs to her head at this point, one on each side.  They are simply pinned into the styrofoam.

I am attempting to make the eyes "follow you around", and to do this, they need to be set back from the face.  Here are the spacers that I cast out of body putty with wire mesh glued onto them to the eyes themselves  The eyes are painted onto this mesh before they are put into the head.

A head on view with the eyes glued in.

Here is a side detail of an eye.  Again, I plan to enlarge them, they are a tad small here.

And here is how the head looked when I took it to Midwest Furfest 2007.

A side view.  Another planned addition for the future is to add a cooling fan inside the nose to bring in fresh air... remember drilling out the nose?

Yep, the eyes do follow you, but they will look better when they are enlarged.  You will notice in the last three pictures that I have also added long eyelashes.  These were made from paint brush bristles and curled with a curling iron.